Picked A Pocket Of Pitchers And Pie

Got a cool little mailing today from Julie at A Cracked Bat: Baseball Cards And A Hot Dog today.  They were offerings from her Pick My Pockets page for regular readers.

First was a shiny Fedde.  These always scan blue, but they're regular foilboard.  My first parallel National.  The original idea is to make a whole team set of one type of parallel (or all of them), but I've tried this before and failed.

The Penultimate Pick is a Pettitte.  (OK, got that out of my system.)  One more chip out of the house-sized granite block that is the Decade's Best inserts.  I need to generate some bulk trades on these so I don't have to buy a lot of them.

And finally, a George Foster red American Sluggers insert from 2002 Topps American Pie.  I finished all four colors when I did the set, but haven't done the same for my player collections. 

Thanks a lot Julie!  Gonna check out your want lists anyway!

I Prevailed With Retail!

My posting schedule is all jacked up.  The free time I had over the weekend was spent sitting in front of this screen, but not writing posts.  As if I needed any more incoming stock, I amassed another huge SportLots order.  Then Monday night I just wasn't feeling like doing anything.  So here we are.

I did manage to break the other three boxes of 2020 Heritage.  And I'm very pleased with the results.  Going in, I knew I would be missing out on box toppers, buybacks and a (long) shot at some of the parallels.  But I since I really only wanted a base set with a significant number of short prints, plus the regular inserts, what I got was very comparable to hobby boxes for about half the price.  (They're now $10 more.)

You saw last time that I lucked out on a relic in box one.  Went to the second box and by halfway through, I had pulled the same inserts.  That always annoys me.  Luckily, that trend only continued for four of them.  The Willie Mays' and NAPpy's were different.  So with that and card #1, I'm doing OK.   The short prints are everything after Yaddy's cool card at #400.  I sorted all my base into 100s, so they are separated.  Some decent names in the shorties to start.

Box three -  KABAM!  Not only did I pull another relic, but it was basically the best one I could have pulled - Stephen Strasburg! - and it was a gold (tan?) version numbered out of 99!  And all the inserts were different!  Suh-WEEET!  Vogelmonster sighting in the SPs.  Hoping for a dupe.  May have peaked after the third box.

So that has to be it, right?  Retail odds on hits are 50% at best - at least I always think so.  Au contraire!  It's a fabric trifecta!  And another crop of inserts.  These short prints look kinda familar, though.  Ha! Second Vogie has been captured!

I was fortunate enough to pull the Trout SP in the first box, along with Mr. Highlight insert this year, Rhys Hoskins.  Love the Robles with the rookie cup.  So that last crop of short prints is all dupes.

So, recapping the pulls:

Four nice stacks of base.  I skimmed through and didn't see any notations on the back for missing sigs, action poses, or errors.  Guess that's the retail disadvantage.  I'd rather go buy the ones I want anyway.  I'm halfway through sorting base and I am in fact short a few cards.  I'll have a list up on my site by the end of the week.

News Flashbacks - gonna need another one of the moon landing cards for my space binder, along with twins of the Mariner 9 on Mars and Lunar Rover.  Have an extra Nasdaq.

The duplicates ate into my Baseball Flashbacks and Then & Nows.  Have two of the Carew, and Stargell/Alonso, Fergie/Stras if anyone wants to swap.  Will also need pairs of the Palmer, Fisk and Torre inserts among these.

When I saw another Giants Seasons 1961 come out of a pack, I thought it was a double too, but nope!  These are cool, though they fudged the more clever name "Gigantic Seasons".

And finally, the part a lot of you are waiting for - a look at all the sweet mojoz together.  Those (silver?) chrome refractors are kinda cool, even though I loathe Chrome on retro sets.  The '71 design lends itself well to colors and shiny, I have to say.  These are all for trade except of course Strasburg.  I'm wishing that blue swatch is a World Series jersey.  It's probably just the blue alt button-down, but Dare To Dream.

I would have never imagined I would pull three relics from four retail boxes.  It's not quite like pulling All-Star caliber autographs, but as I've said, I'm very satisfied for what I got for basically the price of only two hobby boxes.  Hope you do as well as I did!  Let's trade!

Diving Into The Darkness

Quick post today to fill in the empty spot.  I'm a day or so behind my regular posting schedule, but it took me most of the evening yesterday and some this morning to clear my desk so I could start on these:

Four boxes of 2020 Heritage.  The Retail variety.  I checked the ratios of the regular insert cards between Hobby and Retail boxes, and they were exactly the same.  Quite low, I think, compared to a few years ago, but I have yet to research that in depth.  (Stay tuned).  But based on that comparison, I figured I'm only really after a base set and the normal inserts, so all I'm missing out on is the Greatest Moments box toppers and maybe a jersey card.  $55 each instead of $98 is worth the sacrifice.  So I ordered from my favorite vendor near Baltimore on Thursday afternoon, got the shipment notification before I left work that day, and they were waiting for me when I got home Friday.  (Editor's note - they're $59 now.  Six left in stock.  Steel City wants $72 each).

Before I got to open one of them last night, I had to wade through the huge pile of Redskins cards I had amassed since the summer.  I sorted all the 2000's into piles and then went through my Word document list that starts at 2009, and then on to my printed list for the older ones.  Then after confirming that I had checked them all off, I put them in their proper vinyl case.  This morning, I filed away all the duplicates that came out of the horde - seen below in the criss-crossed pile.

Those stacks are mostly dupes except for the hockey.

After the cataloging and filing was done, (sometimes this hobby is real work) I did manage to open one box.  It took me five packs in until I got an insert of any kind.  What I ended up with wasn't bad though.

Actually pulled a gamer!  I can confirme that there are, in fact, Rangers in Heritage, because I got a Joey Gallo game-used.  Any Rangers fans still grumpy about the shunning in Series 1 can trade me for it.

The Clevinger is a Chrome and is for trade too.  I think I was the first comment on the Beckett post announcing the Chromification of A&G and Stadium Club.  I said retro sets and Chrome don't go together.  And I still say it.  Now the Stadium Club Chromes that were in the last couple year's packs were awesome.  I would go for those if they come out at more than four cards in a pack for less than $100 a box.  But I bet it won't happen that way.  Flagship Chrome has always been too pricey for my taste.

Anyway, I'm about to plow through the other three boxes.  Plus, I still really want to start showing what's in the Hoard of monster boxes, I just can't decide how best to do it.  So keep it here for that.

The First Of Four Is Fuji

Monday was a big mailday here at the Collective.  Got four packages, two of which are from bloggers.  The others are from guys in my Trading Bases group.

Today we'll check out the care package from one of the most famous bloggers, Fuji, as you can see from the return label.

He even seals the inner bag with a custom label.  Very nice!

Starts out the selection with a 1979 TCMA Senator - Roy Sievers.  The Washington theme continues throughout the package.

Redskins mojo!  Nice Rod Gardner game-worn jersey swatch from 2005 Upper Deck.  Always nice when they actually say it's really from an official game.

This one's from rookie prospect Devin Thomas, who had a thousand jersey cards, but didn't ever play in many games.  Nice looking card though.  I think I have one similar, but don't think it's blue.  Serial numbered to 399.

Here's Rod again, this time in a Rookie Retro Threads from Fleer Tradition, in the style of 1962 Topps.  But wait, there's more!

This isn't a second RRT card, it's the back of the Gardner.  Double the football pieces!

And finally, a really nice autograph from Skybox Autographics from the very end of the previous century.  Now that is a signature.  Not one of those initials-only scribbles you get out of a lot of guys these days.

Thanks a lot Fuji!!  I don't think I had any of these!

They're Just More Down To Earth

Did some damage to Robert's Jim Thome list, so I got my second delivery from him in the last month.  Let's dig in!

Two more for what I hope is not a decade-long quest to fill out the 100 (+150 later) insert set of Decade's Best.  These are my first ones from these particular eras.  I like that they mixed up the graphics to reflect the times.  And Ryan and Murray are nice pulls too!.

Still way behind on 2019 Update inserts, but this really helps.  Five more Perennial All-Stars.  This would be another plain player worship set if not for the stars and stripes.  At least there's not 100 of these.

Another step closer to completing last year's A&G [master] set, Teddy Ballgame.  Ginter knows inserts.

And a nice eight piece array of 2011 Heritage cards.  I had these listed on my wants as short prints, but looking at the database, there are apparently only a few actual shortprints throughout the set.  This is like the third batch from this product that I've received in the last few weeks.  I was wondering why they seemed to be so easy to come by.  Now I know.  Too bad they didn't continue that trend into later years.  Or at least get on the A&G or Gypsy Queen program where the short prints aren't a big deal because they show up only slightly less than regular base cards.

Thanks again, Robert! 

Collector's Log: Stardate 198209.16

We pick up in 1982 in mid-September.  School is back in session, as is after school neighborhood baseball, and card trading.

I mentioned before that "3 hits" was just our rotating game of a pitcher and a couple fielders at the backstop in front of my townhouse rotating postitions after each batter hit three.

The evolution of my timepieces:

 

  

Those were the days when most people wore a watch instead of carrying a multipurpose device in their pockets.  I slowly migrated to a pocket watch in the late 90's, and didn't have a cell phone until years after they became popular.  At least my pesky stepsister couldn't get a hold of that!
Picture of pocket watches are my actual items.  My old wristwatch looks almost exactly the same too, and they're all still in my top dresser drawer.  My current phone is the Samsung Galaxy 7 as shown.  The flip phone is as close as I can remember.  How quickly we move on, eh?

 

I paged through my '81 set and still have no idea who the last two cards were, so here are the Mike-Mayer brothers instead.  (Pronounced MIK-ka-my-er)  Trademarks were a bitch back then, even though there wasn't anyone else who could show logos.  Every team except the Rams are in full blank helmet glory.

Not sure what Billy did in Baltimore that day, but it probably involved his dad taking him to a card shop or something.  Though the one Mr. H used to frequent was north of DC, not Baltimore.

Lisa didn't come around to trade much, and I guess that's why.  1969 Topps were ANCIENT to us back then, I'm sure.

This was a heck of a deal though.  I had several Brocks available when I got that lot of 1970 from my stepfather's relative, so this was a no-brainer.  That "$5" may have been current Beckett value.  Somehow, I still need a Palmer single scratchoff today, though.  Must have traded it before I started collecting him in earnest.  Which makes sense since I just got his rookie the previous Christmas.

Not a card thing, but an interesting exploration of the composition of a baseball.  Something like this:

And then the next day...  Well, some kids did social things, and I did stuff like that.

Next time: The MLB post season!

Big Mailday Coming, But Not Now!

Got an envelope in the mail a couple days ago from Topps Now!.

You might have seen where I had ordered one of the Washington Nationals Now! championship team sets back in November.  It came with an autograph from one of several players that would be shipped at a later date.

Could this be my long awaited prize?  Oh please let it be Strasburg, or Scherzer, or even Kendrick. (My luck, I'll get the guy I have the least enthusiasm for, Corbin).

Open it up!

Yep, single trading card inside.  Along with this folded card.  Drum roll....

Ugh.  It's an ad for the new season of Topps Now!.

The upside is, it's a Mike Trout card.  Looks a bit like they twisted the sidebar of the flagship set and ran it along the bottom edge and up the right side a little ways.  The back has that cool embossed logo effect. Any Trout collectors, hit me up.  I don't really need to hold on to this.  The only other Now! cards I'll be getting is if the Nats or O's win another championship, or one of my player collection guys comes out of retirement.

Blogger Tech Chapter 1: ASCII Me How To Type That

Being a professional computer technician since the mid-90's, I know a lot of keyboard shortcuts and little Windows tricks that the average user may not be aware of.  I threw one out in a recent post about typing custom characters.  Figured I'd give a little lesson to those that didn't know about it already.

There are certain custom characters that you can generate with a keystroke.  They are called ASCII characters.  It is a finite set of letters, numbers, and symbols that are handy in a lot of computing and writing applications.

This is the chart of ASCII characters.  I modified it slightly to fill in a few codes in the first column that Blogger generates instead of the listed Beep codes, carriage return, and a couple other functions.  Save the picture and print it out on a full sheet of paper.  I always keep one of these near my keyboard.

So how do you make them work?  It's simple, but there is a certain technique to it.

Say I want to type about a Ronald Acuña card.  You'll find the accented "n" is number 164 on the chart.

Hold the ALT key, and then type out 1-6-4 but don't use the number keys above the letters, use the number pad over to the right side of most keyboards.  Your NumLock should be ON.  As soon as you are done with the three digits, let go of the ALT key.  Your symbol should appear!  Sometimes adding a leading zero will assure the proper character is output.  Most of the time I just use the three numbers.

Here is a quick video lesson that illustrates this well.

Some notable characters that I use all the time:
╔════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║  ¢ - cent symbol  (ALT - 155)  25¢ each                                                               ║
║  ½ - half  (ALT - 171)  2½" x  3½" slices of crack                                              ║
║  ¼ - one quarter (ALT - 172)                                                                                 ║
║  ° - degree symbol (ALT - 248)  Turn the card 90°                                          ║
║  √ - check mark (ALT - 251)  Great for checklist cards on want lists            ║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════╝


Évëñ   ┬╫○ûg╫   │┬$   Ä  ╘│M│┬êD   $é┬,  You can do a lot with these symbols.  They also work in most Office programs and other Windows applications.  Some of the characters might come out different in certain places.  You just have to experiment.